The way to represent categorical variables is with factors. See ?factor. randomForest() will handle factors appropriately, as most modeling functions in R.
Andy > -----Original Message----- > From: r-help-boun...@r-project.org > [mailto:r-help-boun...@r-project.org] On Behalf Of abhishek > Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2012 8:11 AM > To: r-help@r-project.org > Subject: [R] Using caegorical variables in package randomForest. > > Hello, > > I am sorry if there are already post that answers to this > question but i > tried to find them before making this post. I did not really > find relevant > posts. > > I am using randomForest package for building a two class > classifier. There > are categorical variables and numerical variables in my data. > Different > categorical variables have different number of categories > from 2 to 10. I am > not sure about how to represent the categorical data. > For example, I am using 0 and 1 for variables that have only > two categories. > But, i doubt, the program is analysing the values as > numerical. Do you have > any idea how can i use the c*ategorical variables for > building a two class > classifier.* I am using a factor consisting of 0 and 1 for the > classification target. > > Thank you for your ideas. > > ----- > abhishek > -- > View this message in context: > http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/Using-caegorical-variables-in-pa ckage-randomForest-tp4468923p4468923.html > Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > Notice: This e-mail message, together with any attachme...{{dropped:11}} ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
